Dancing With The Stars voting glitch forces text-only ballots for premiere night
Dancing With The Stars Season 35 premiered on September 15 with a technical issue that limited online voting to text messages only.
Online system failure during show
Hosts Julianne Hough and Alfonso Ribeiro announced that the online voting platform was down after the second dance of the premiere. Viewers were then informed that any votes submitted through the website would be discarded for the first night of competition. The production team decided to accept only text messages from the audience for this specific elimination round.
Instructions for duplicate contestant names
The competition features two celebrities named Connor, requiring viewers to distinguish between Conner Leavitt and Connor Wood when casting ballots. Audience members must text the letters L or W to select their preferred partner in this specific category. This distinction applies only to the first night of the split-season premiere format.
Schedule split for male and female stars
The premiere episode is divided into two nights with Tuesday featuring the male celebrities and Wednesday hosting the female contestants. One celebrity from each group faces elimination at the end of their respective episodes. Scores for the first night ranged from 10 to 20 points across various dance numbers.
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